The Tarkine (Indigenous name: takayna), officially takayna / the Tarkine, is an area containing the Savage River National Park in North West Tasmania, Australia, which contains significant areas of wilderness.
The Tarkine is noted for its beauty and natural values, containing the largest area of Gondwanan cool-temperate rainforest in Australia,- as well as for its prominence in Tasmania's early mining history. The area's high concentration of Aboriginal sites has led to it being described by the Australian Heritage Council as "one of the world's great archaeological regions".Richards, Thomas; Sutherland-Richards, Phillipa (1992). "Archaeology". In: Harries, D.N. (editor). Forgotten Wilderness: North-West Tasmania. A Report to the Australian Heritage Commission. Hobart: Tasmanian Conservation Trust.
Location
The Tarkine is gazetted by the Tasmanian government as an unbounded locality in northwest Tasmania. The generally accepted definition is the area between the Arthur River in the North, the Pieman River in the south, the ocean to the west and the Murchison Highway in the east.-
It was first officially recognised in May 2013, following a recommendation by the Nomenclature Board of Tasmania which was accepted by Bryan Green. He declared that the name applied to the whole northwest region of Tasmania, but this interpretation was rejected by the Cradle Coast Authority, which had requested the official naming.- The name does not appear in maps, but in recent decades has featured prominently in the Australian media as a subject of contention between conservationists and mining/logging interests.
The Tarkine can be entered from several points, with the most common being via Sumac Road from the north, Corinna in the south, Waratah in the west and Wynyard from the northeast. Burnie airport, located near Wynyard, provides interstate flights, and there is sealed road access from the airport into the Tarkine.
Etymology The name "Tarkine" was coined by the conservation movement and was in use by 1991. It is a diminutive of the name "Tarkiner",George Augustus Robinson described his meetings with Tarkiner Aborigines in his 1829-1834 diaries. which is the anglicised pronunciation of one of the Aboriginal tribes who inhabited the western Tasmanian coastline from the Arthur River to the Pieman River before European colonisation.
Natural and archaeological values
The Tarkine contains extensive high-quality wilderness as well as extensive, largely undisturbed tracts of cool temperate rainforest which are extremely rare.- It also represents Australia's largest remaining single tract of temperate rainforest. It contains approximately 1,800 km² of rainforest, around 400 km² of eucalypt forest and a mosaic of other vegetation communities, including dry sclerophyll forest, woodland, buttongrass moorland, sandy littoral communities, wetlands, grassland and Sphagnum communities.
Significantly, it has a high diversity of non-vascular plants (mosses, liverworts and lichens) including at least 151 species of liverworts and 92 species of mosses. Its range of vertebrate fauna include 28 terrestrial mammals, 111 land and freshwater birds, 11 reptiles, 8 frogs and 13 freshwater fish. The Tarkine provides habitat for over 60 rare, threatened and endangered species of flora and fauna.
The area comprises a number of rivers, exposed mountains, globally unique magnesite and dolomite cave systems and the largest basalt plateau in Tasmania to have retained its original vegetation.
There are also large sand dune areas extending several kilometres inland. Some of these contain ancient Aboriginal middens.
The Tarkine played a central role in the development of Tasmania's early mining industry, and remains of early mining activity can still be seen in many rivers and creeks in the area that were mined for gold, tin and osmiridium. Nowadays the remains of approximately 600 sites of historic mining activity in the area are still evident. The majority of these mining operations were alluvial workings or small hard-rock mines, consisting often of single adits. Larger scale mining has been carried out mainly at Luina, Savage River and Mt Bischoff. Part of the area is contained in the Arthur – Pieman Conservation Area managed by the Tasmania parks and wildlife service.
Early conservation movement The campaign to protect the Tarkine began in the 1960s. A formal conservation proposal was put forward by the then Circular Head Mayor Horace Arnold 'Jim' Lane for the establishment of a 'Norfolk Range National Park'. Lane's proposal was ahead of its time, though his proposal wasn't seen to fruition.
From the late 1990s, the area came under increasing national and international scrutiny in a similar vein to the environmental protests surrounding Tasmania's Franklin River and Queensland's Daintree Rainforest. The case for protecting the Tarkine was significantly advanced with the Federal Government's Forestry Package in 2005 adding to reserves in the Tarkine.
Only 10% of takayna/the Tarkine area is protected as National Park, with the 180km2 Savage River National Park. which protects the largest contiguous area of cool temperate rainforest surviving in Australia.
Current land tenure and legislation The Tasmanian reserve management system is one of the most comprehensive and sophisticated in Australia. The Nature Conservation Act 2002 (NCA) and the National Parks and Reserves Management Act 2002 (NPRMA) are the two key pieces of Tasmania legislation that empower reserve management.
Tasmania has eight separate public reserve classes with each class having detailed values and purposes for reservation defined in legislation. Just because a parcel of land is placed in the formal reserve system, does not mean that all activities are banned within the area. Some reserves, like National Parks and State Reserves, are set aside for conservation as well as ecologically sustainable tourism. One such example is the Corinna Wilderness Village, which empowers the region by allowing tourists to experience the southern end of takayna/the Tarkine in an accessible and ecologically friendly way. Game reserves are set aside for conservation purposes and also allow the ecologically sustainable taking of designated game species (i.e. hunting).
Two classes of reserve - Regional Reserves and Conservation Areas are both reserve classes aimed at conserving biological and geological diversity whilst also allowing for mining and the controlled use of other natural resources including sustainable harvesting of special timbers.
Whilst some in the environment movement claim that Tasmanian legislation was changed in 2014 to allow for special timbers harvesting in Regional Reserves and Conservation Areas, the legislative record does not support this contention. This issue was closely examined in 2015 by the Director of National Parks in his report to the Tasmanian Planning Commission on public representations received on the Draft Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan. In the section of the report discussing specialty timber harvesting the Director clearly stated that "The management objectives for conservation areas and regional reserves (s5 and s7, Schedule 1 NPRMA) have included ‘the controlled use of natural resources’, since the NPRMA commenced in 2002 and prior to that they were in the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1970" and "The 2014 legislation did not provide anything that was not already implicitly or explicitly provided for in regional reserves and conservation areas."
The Tarkine contains a variety of reserve tenures including; National park, State Reserve, Regional Reserve, Conservation Area and nature Recreation Areas. Some reserves, such as the Savage River Regional Reserve, provide protection for core wilderness areas, acting as buffers as can be seen in the Draft Savage River National Park and Savage River Regional Reserve Management Plan 2001.
Proposed Tarkine National Heritage listing In December 2009, the Tarkine was listed as a National Heritage Area following an Emergency National Heritage Listing. The Emergency Listing was in response to a proposed Tarkine Road, which would have coursed through old growth forest and detrimentally affected the natural values of undisturbed areas. In December 2010, the incoming Environment Minister Tony Burke allowed the emergency listing to lapse in the face of numerous mining proposals in the Tarkine. This was despite recommendations from the Australian Heritage Council to permanently list takayna/the Tarkine. Minister Burke had further extended the period for reassessment of the Tarkine, with the Australian Heritage Council due to re-report on the suitability of takayna/the Tarkine as a National Heritage location by the end of December 2013. Conservation groups declared this an unacceptable delay, and had voiced concerns that this left the Tarkine unprotected from mining while the reassessment took place.
On 8 February 2013 Minister Tony Burke announced that he would reject advice from the Australian Heritage Council that 433,000 hectares should be heritage listed and instead apply a National Heritage Listing only to the 21,000 hectares contained in a 2 km wide section along the coastline.
Proposed Tarkine National Park The environmentalist organisation Tarkine National Coalition, headed by Scott Jordan, proposed the Tarkine be officially declared a national park. However, the process of securing such a declaration has been complicated by the processes of the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement. This legislation was signed on 7 August 2011 by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings. The agreement established a $276 million package to transition Tasmania out of native forest logging, while conserving large areas of high conservation value vegetation. Julia Gillard stated that the Agreement would better protect the Tarkine, describing the wilderness area as "very important".
Subsequent related state legislation (the Tasmanian Forests Agreement Bill 2013) passed through the Tasmanian House of Assembly on 23 November 2012 and then passed to the Tasmanian Legislative Council where it was debated and referred on to a Select Committee. It was ultimately passed on 30 April 2013. The Hobart Mercury noted that "Despite a raft of controversial amendments from the Upper House, all but one of the Tasmanian Greens MPs supported the Bill in the Lower House"
Following enactment of the TFA Act 2013 an initial tranche of land was placed in the Tasmanian Reserve System (approx 100,000ha of the 572,000ha sought by the ENGOs) with the remainder sitting as "future reserve land" that could be added to the state's reserve system once key conditions of the TFA Act were met. Thes conditions included meeting guaranteed wood supply, a lack of substantive protest and Forestry Tasmania (now Sustainable Timbers Tasmania) achieving Forest Stewardship Council certification. The Tasmanian EDO provided information on the reserve making process under the TFA and clearly stated "there is no guarantee under the TFA Act that any reserves will be created, or what category any reserves may be in."
An explanation of land reserved or proposed to be reserved under the TFA Act 2013 can be seen in former Federal Green's leader, Senator Christine Milne's document here .